At a time when California's economic, energy, and security increasingly rely on scientific and engineering expertise, federal funded laboratories provide critically important know-how and highly specialized facilities.

California has over 40, more than any other state, and their presence spurs innovation in high-tech industries; they also serve as a magnet for some of the best scientific minds in the nation. Even so, they remain a largely untapped resource by the state. As part of a new collaboration with six major federal research and development laboratories, CCST released a report in February 2006, California's Federal Laboratories: A State Resource, intended to document the impact of these facilities and examine ways in which the state could connect with them even more effectively.

The report, written in response to a request from State Senator Jackie Speier, co-chair of the Senate Subcommittee for Higher Education, focuses on the six largest of California's Department of Energy and NASA funded federal laboratories that have ongoing relationships with research universities, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories/California, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, NASA Ames Research Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It outlines the research they conduct on materials science, energy research, computer science, aerospace engineering, and biotechnology. The report also highlights the collective impact of these facilities on the state's economy; for example, they have a combined budget exceeding $5 billion and employ over 23,000 high-tech workers. In addition, they play an important role in education by working with students, faculty and teachers through a wide variety of programs.

One of the key messages in the report was the fact that contracting procedures between federal and state government make it virtually impossible for the state to contract with federal funded laboratories, making much of the labs' cutting-edge research and development inaccessible to the state. This includes technologies used by the federal government in response to natural and manmade emergencies such as NASA satellite tracking of levees and field robots (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory "Urban Eyes" system) capable of locating flood and earthquake victims.

The CCST report was well received in Sacramento upon its release on February 1, the day of the CCST Council meeting. State Senator Jackie Speier found the message in the report so compelling that she held a press conference to announce legislation addressing some of the challenges identified in the report.

Urban Eyes provides the capability to detect, locate, track and identify personnel behind obstructions from a standoff distance using ultra-wideband (UWB) radar sensors in remote or other locations that do not necessarily provide communications infrastructure. Photo courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"I didn't quite expect the report I received," said Speier at a press conference convened on February 1. "Inside is an amazing perspective that deserves the immediate attention of state policymakers. We are sitting on a gold mine of technology that can energize our economy and we're not mining it - in fact, we're not even prospecting yet."

The procedural incompatibility has long been a source of frustration for the federal laboratories, but was not widely known among policymakers prior to the release of the CCST report.

"I say if it is a matter of saving lives and our economy, let's contract, let's put the technology to use as soon as possible," said Speier.

Senator Speier, together with Assembly Members Sally Lieber and Betty Karnette, has proposed a bill, SB 1629 (the Federal Laboratory Technology Contracting Act), which will "modify the existing contracting procedures and policies to require a state agency that contracts with a federally funded research laboratory, as defined, to make contract payments in advance, indemnify, to the extent permitted by state law, the laboratory, as provided, and reimburse the laboratory for the actual costs".

In addition to presenting the federal laboratories report to Sacramento lawmakers, CCST Executive Director Susan Hackwood and CCST Fellow William McLean, former Director of Combustion and Physical Sciences at Sandia California, went to Washington D.C. to visit the offices of Senators Boxer and Feinstein as well as 18 California Congressional representatives; Congressman Ken Calvert hosted a reception for CCST to recognize the launch of the report.

The report represents the first major component of a multi-year affiliate member collaboration between CCST and the federal laboratories. In the coming year, CCST will also study the federal laboratories' relationship with research universities and industry. The laboratories will also work closely with CCST in pursuing other areas of inquiry such as California energy policy and education reform.